Clark for President: A Campaign Critique (David F. Nolan)

CLARK
PRESIDENT

A Campaign Critique

Copyright © 1980
By David F. Nolan

“Those who will not learn from history are condemned to repeat its mistakes.”

–George Santayana

INTRODUCTION

The Bonaventure Hotel, Los Angeles, September 8, 1979: Ed Clark, newly-nominated presidential candidate of the Libertarian Party, stood before a crowd of 2,000 cheering supporters and spoke stirringly of building a three-party system in the United States.

The campaign’s goal, he stated, was to produce “several million votes,” and thereby propel the Libertarian Party to major-party status.

And, he assured the assembled multitude, this would be a hardcore campaign, with no compromise on libertarian principles. The loudest cheers came when Clark spoke of abolishing the IRS; his rhetoric left little doubt in listeners’ minds that this would be a campaign we could be proud of.

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Fourteen months later, the cheering had faded into a stunned silence. On Election Day, Ed Clark and David Koch polled only 900,000 votes nationwide — a far cry from the oft-referred-to “several million”.

Worse yet, the campaign had not been hard-core. Instead, it had been a campaign of principles betrayed and promises broken. The abolitionist rhetoric of 1979 had given way to liberal reform proposals; the basic issue of individual rights versus state power had been obscured by a fog of amiable-sounding platitudes about benevolence and hope.

Only one percent of the electorate had cast their votes for Clark’s “new beginning”. What portion — if any — of that vote was cast for libertarian principles, and what portion for “low-tax liberalism”, will never be known.

In the following pages, we will examine the record of the Clark campaign in some detail. The first section compares the campaign’s stated goals with its achieved results. Following sections deal with the conduct of the campaign itself, focusing on the questions of Strategy, Purity, Management and Ethics. The final section offers a summary and conclusions.

Your comments are solicited.

GOALS AND RESULTS

The announced goal of the Clark campaign was to make significant progress toward establishing a three-party system in the United States — to get “several million votes”, achieve a “balance of power” position, and create a new “mass alternative party”. A top priority was to gain inclusion in the presidential debates sponsored by the League of Women Voters; another was to generate significant, continuing coverage by the major mass media. And it was all to be done without compromising principles.

Judged by any of these criteria, the campaign was a disappointment. Although the term “several million” was never defined publicly, most Libertarians took it to mean somewhere in the region of three to five million votes. At an early Steering Committee meeting, campaign mastermind Ed Crane spoke confidently of getting 4% of the vote, and produced a writeup by one political analyst citing this as a realistic possibility. The most commonly mentioned figure (in private) was three million votes, and when I publicly ventured a projection of two million, I was chided for being “negative”. Both Clark and Crane readily acknowledged that anything under one million would be “a failure”.

The actual result — 900,000 votes, or just over 1% — was thus only one-third to one-fourth of the announced goal, and less than half of my “pessimistic” estimate. As to whether a showing of 1% can be described as evidence of a “mass alternative party”, and the beginning of a “three-party system”, an examination of political history quickly shows that it is not.

Since 1900, no less than nineteen third-party and independent presidential candidates have done better than Ed Clark did in 1980. Seven of these were men who broke away from one of the existing major parties, and thus not directly comparable. Setting these aside, however, we are still faced with the fact that Clark’s showing was bettered by the Socialists on six occasions (top showing; 6% in 1912), the Prohibitionists on five (top performance: 1.9% in 1904), and the crypto-fascist Union Party with just under 2% in 1946. As far as I know, none of these is generally considered a “mass alternative party”, but perhaps I’ve missed something.

The term “balance of power” is of course subject to debate. Obviously, in any presidential election, there will be a few states where the outcome is decided by a margin of 1% or 2%. And in this year’s election, the presence of John Anderson makes it difficult to say where — or if — our votes “made the difference”. But to suggest that a 1% showing has the GOP or Democrats quaking in their boots or established the LP as roughly equal to the two major parties in anyone’s mind is patently absurd.

So we didn’t achieve major-party status, or anything remotely like it, with the Clark campaign. Still, Clark’s 900,000 votes represent a substantial gain over past showings, and show that we’re still gaining momentum . . . don’t they?

No, not really. At first glance, Clark’s performance appears to be a solid step forward from MacBride’s 175,000 in 1976 — an increase of better than five to one, and surely a healthy sign. But on closer examination, even this achievement is not all that it seems.

First, it must be noted that about one-quarter of Clark’s vote came from states where MacBride was not on the ballot four years ago — which means that in states where a direct comparison is possible, the average gain drops to less than four to one. And even that figure is deceptive. For when you look at the results on a state-by-state basis, some disturbing facts emerge.

By and large, Clark’s largest gains over MacBride’s showing came in states where our ‘76 showing was very feeble indeed — 0.1% to 0.2%. Starting from a base this small, large relative gains are easy to make.

Our gains in areas of previous strength were far smaller. In the nine states where MacBride polled 0.5% or better in 1976, our gains were far less encouraging. Our percentage in Alaska barely doubled, as did those in Arizona and Idaho. Clark’s showing in California was little more than 2 ½ times MacBride’s total four years ago — and was 60% less than Clark’s own performance there in 1978, despite a 23% increase in total vote cast!

The same “low gain” pattern holds true for most of the other “high base” states. In fact, there is only one state — Colorado — which was able to quadruple its vote total starting from a base of 0.5% or better in 1976! (The actual gain in Colorado was the only high-base, high-gain state.)

These results suggest that the Clark campaign failed, almost completely, to capitalize on our existing strengths — despite having spent over three million dollars. The cost per vote received works out to an almost unbelieveable three and one half dollars. In contrast, many of our state and local candidates — such as David Bergland, running for U.S. Senate in California — spent only ten or twenty cents per vote. Clearly, the Clark campaign was a horrible failure from a cost-effectiveness standpoint.

The burning question to be answered, of course, is “Why?” Why did Clark’s campaign fail so abysmally at gaining public acceptance, and moving the Libertarian Party toward “mass alternative party” status? What went wrong?

The answer that will be put forth by those who managed (or, more accurately, mismanaged) the Clark effort will be “Anderson”. But this explanation (or excuse) fails on two counts.

First, it should be remembered that all through the campaign, up until the last month or so, the crew at Clark Headquarters in Washington was staunchly maintaining that Anderson’s presence in the race would actually help Clark. Their argument was that by breaking the “two-party mindset”, Anderson would increase people’s receptiveness to alternative choices. At one point, Crane even gleefully referred to Anderson as “our stalking-horse”.

More significantly, historical evidence indicates that this hypothesis should be correct. The one and only time during the twentieth century that an ideological third-party candidate got more than 3½% of the vote was in 1912, when Socialist Eugene Debs received 6% — about double the usual showing for the Socialists in that era.

The only plausible explanation for this sudden upsurge is that 1912 was the year when a major “breakaway” candidate — Teddy Roosevelt — was also in the running. Roosevelt’s presence in the race did in fact “break open the system”, and as a result, people were more willing to vote for a radical alternative.

Given the temper of the electorate in 1980, and the widespread dissatisfaction with the establishment party candidates, a similar phenomenon should have occurred this time. Clark should have done far better than he did, Anderson or no Anderson. And any attempt to pin Clark’s failure on Anderson’s candidacy is thus nothing more than a cheap attempt to weasel out of accepting the blame for a showing that — by Clark’s own definition — was a failure.

The real reasons for the failure of the Clark campaign lie in its misconceived strategy and poor management. And the greatest share of the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of Communications Directer Ed Crane, who — despite a promise to the contrary by Ed Clark — was given almost total control over the campaign.

With this in mind, let us now turn to an examination of the campaign’s strategy.

STRATEGY

Murray Rothbard has described the essential strategy of the Clark campaign as “trying to create a movement with mirrors — fostering the illusion that a new mass party already existed, and getting the media to cover it, in the hope that the reality would materialize as a result.”

Inevitably, this strategy necessitated a fair amount of deception: pretending to be something we aren’t, and disguising what we really stand for. (Elsewhere, I have referred to this tactic — somewhat indelicately — as “whoring after the media”. After reading this report, you can judge for yourself whether this description is accurate.)

Questions of principles and ethics aside for the moment, it should now be obvious that this strategy was misconceived; the major media simply didn’t fall for the trick.

To be sure, the Clark campaign generated feature articles in 15 or 20 general-circulation or special-interest magazines with a combined total circulation of about 15-20 million.* Most of these articles were unbiased or mildly favorable in content; one or two were very favorable; two were quite hostile. In terms of reaching the voters, the most significant piece was probably the interview in Penthouse (circulation 4.7 million).

Unfortunately, magazines like Penthouse do not play a major role in shaping political opinion or setting the social agenda in this country. Most people’s perception of who is — and who is not — a “real and significant” presidential candidate is shaped largely by a small handful of news media: the two leading wire services, two or three prominent newspapers, the three major weekly newsmagazines, and, most important of all, the three television networks. (Uncle Walter reaches more people, on any given evening, than the readership of all those magazine articles combined.)

And these are precisely the media which paid little or no attention to the Clark campaign.

Of the hundreds of hours spent on the presidential campaign by the three TV networks, Clark received a grand total of perhaps two hours; three minutes here, eight minutes there — with much of it devoted to describing him as “the unknown candidate”, and/or pairing him with Barry Commoner.

Likewise, while Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News each spend about 200 pages, over the year, on the presidential election, their coverage of Clark was almost nil: one short piece in Newsweek; the same in U.S. News, nothing at all in Time.

It is reasonable, of course, to ask why this happened. Why did the key national media so resolutely ignore the Clark campaign? And the answer, I will submit, rests on two points.

First, it should be noted, the people in the media are not stupid. And they resent any attempts to trick them into covering things on false premises.

A simple check with the Federal Election Commission would reveal that the Clark campaign was not, in fact, a “mass alternative” phenomenon — that two-thirds of its funds were coming from one man. And the fact that Clark, Crane and company were not telling the truth about this point could only serve to anger any ethical professional journalist. (Clark even went so far as to state, on Issues and Answers, that Koch’s contributions were “not a very large proportion” of the campaign funds — hardly a move calculated to win the respect of the media.)

But there is a deeper, more fundamental reason why Crane’s “media-oriented” strategy failed. And it is simply that the major, opinion-molding national news media organizations are an integral part of the power structure we are seeking to dismantle. They are fundamentally hostile to our goals; and no matter how much the Clark campaign tried to disguise us as a liberal reform movement (“low-tax liberals”, if you will), that fundamental hostility remained. The controlled national media were not about to help us topple the corporate-state power structure in this country!

If anything, the slick, soft-sell approach backfired on us. By pretending to be something other than what we really are, we gave the media the ammunition to say, “Not only are these guys really radicals; they’re dishonest, too.” This was precisely the position taken by People magazine in its sneering, sarcastic article on Clark. People, it should be remembered, is part of the Time empire.

The worst aspect of Crane’s “media” strategy, however, was that it caused the Clark campaign to make serious compromises on principle. The next section of this report deals with that point.

PURITY

In hopes of attaining massive media coverage for the Clark campaign, Crane and his cohorts adopted what has come to be known as the Low-Tax Liberal ploy. This involved two basic elements:

First, positioning Clark as a “liberal reformer” — presenting proposals in the context of making the existing system more humane and benevolent, while avoiding “controversial” statements (i.e., references to absolute principles) at all costs.

Second, wrapping this watered-down version of libertarianism in a “mod” package — giving Clark a Kennedyesque hairdo, adopting a vapid campaign slogan, and setting the whole thing to music, in the form of a cute, sing-songy jingle.

The first sign of The Shape of Things To Come appeared in November of 1979, when The New York Times quoted Clark as describing himself as a “low-tax liberal”. This aroused considerable ire in the libertarian community, and the unfortunate phrase was eventually abandoned . . . but the idea it represented lingered on through the campaign.

The next major indication that the Clark campaign was going to pull its punches came in February, when Clark’s reply to Carter’s State of the Union Message was published (as an ad, three weeks after the fact) in the Times. The ad was devoted almost entirely to foreign policy, and spoke out against Carter’s plans for draft registration . . . but somehow, in its 1800 words, never got around to mentioning that Libertarians are opposed to the draft on principle.

Tibor Machan, writing in frontlines, summed up the ad’s basic flaw very accurately: “In opposing draft registration, the advertisement frets a lot about the consequences of war but nowhere mentions that conscription is evil in principle, even if no war resulted from it. The idea that individuals have an unalienable right to life is crucial in this discussion, but the ad sacrifices this in favor of an appeal to the liberal, Vietnam War-fearing readers of the Times. A party of principle has no justification for this kind of slanted presentation of its views, not on such a basic issue!”*

Was this ad just an isolated fluke? Or was it part of a carefully-planned attempt to create misimpressions as to what libertarianism is all about?

A look at the Clark campaign’s treatment of several major issues leads to the conclusion that the latter is the case. As Murray Rothbard observed toward the end of the campaign, “Libertarian principles and the LP platform have been diluted and contradicted in order to tailor the Clark campaign to middle-class liberals of the sort who read and write for The New York Times.”

Murray is generally regarded as representing the radical wing of the party; Tibor is usually viewed as one of our most conservative spokesmen. Yet they both have made essentially the same observation. My views fall somewhere close to midway between Murray’s and Tibor’s — and I, too, have made the same change. Are all of us off-target? I think not.

Let’s look at the record.

On the subject of foreign policy, Clark was at his best: resolutely non-interventionist, willing to take the pure position even on the tough one, Israel. No quarrels here.

On defense, he waffled, trying to cut it both ways. After receiving some heat from pro-defense forces within the party, he adopted pro-defense rhetoric in his speeches. But the White Paper on Foreign Policy and Defense came out against every single proposed new defense system, and offered no alternatives. Still, given the disagreements within the party on this issue, he can’t really be seriously faulted for his performance here, either.

That’s the good news. Now for the bad parts . . .

On taxes, the Clark campaign equivocated mightily. To be sure, Clark’s position on taxes was far superior to Carter’s or Reagan’s, but it wasn’t the libertarian position. Clark continuously stated that taxes were much too high; that people should “be allowed” to keep “more” of their earnings. The libertarian position, of course, is that taxation — like conscription — is wrong on principle, and that people are entitled to keep all of their earnings. Yet if you read through the little green campaign book, or even the White Paper on Taxes and Spending, you will not find one word to indicate that we oppose taxation on principle.

(Please note: I am not saying that Clark should have proposed immediate abolition of all taxes. But to do everything possible to hide the fact that abolition is our eventual goal is, in my opinion, a severe violation of principle.)

Regarding Social Security, Clark significantly reversed himself from 1979 to 1980. Speaking at the Colorado LP state convention in April of ’79, Clark stated that Social Security should be made voluntary, and that future obligations should be paid, in part, by selling off Federally-held lands. In 1980, he called for allowing people under 40 to drop out of the system; those over 40 would be forced to remain.

Since when do people lose their individual rights when they turn 40? The only acceptable position for a libertarian to take on Social Security is that participation should be completely voluntary, for anyone and everyone!

Regarding welfare, Clark stated at a news conference in San Francisco on July 10 that he would not get rid of welfare programs until his tax-cut policies had produced a “full-employment economy”. Again, hardly the plumb-line libertarian position. Who defines “full employment”? And what happens if it isn’t achieved? Are we stuck with tax-financed welfare programs forever?

On nuclear power, the Clark campaign was perhaps more brazenly opportunistic than on any other issue. In a blatant attempt to woo student anti-nuclear activists, Crane issued a flyer which did everything possible — short of directly lying about the LP position on nuclear power — to create the impression that libertarians are anti-nuclear per se. Despite earlier promises to the contrary, the flyer prominently featured a photo of, and quote from, anti-nuclear leader John Gofman. This brochure (like most of the Clark campaign material) was not submitted to the campaign’s Review Committee — because, as Crane admitted, he knew they wouldn’t approve it!

But all of these transgressions pale in significance when compared to the final act of betrayal.

On Thursday, October 30, ABC Nightline interviewed Ed Clark (along with Barry Commoner) and asked him to explain to their viewers what the Libertarian Party was all about. Clark’s reply was as follows (verbatim transcript):

“We want to get back immediately to the kind of government that President Kennedy had back in the early 1960’s, which I think was much more benevolent. . . had much lower inflation, much higher growth rates, much lower levels of taxes.”

The interviewer, apparently somewhat confused, pointed out that John F. Kennedy was a Democrat, not a Libertarian, and then asked whether Clark was saying that the LP in 1980 was roughly equivalent to the Democrats of 1960. Clark’s reply (again verbatim) was as follows:

“No, I’m saying that we want to get back to the size of government that we had in 1960, right away. That is our immediate program. The Libertarian Party, of course, is not the Democratic Party; we’re a new party, and we’re several years away from doing what the Democrats did.”

There was no hint that Libertarians might have visions beyond that “immediate program”. Even though asked to clarify himself, Clark did not choose to say, “That is our immediate program, but of course it’s only a first step; in the long run, we seek to reduce government far below that level. Our ultimate aim is a completely voluntary society.”

Instead, he chose to identify himself with one of the most explicitly statist Presidents in modern times: the man who said, “Ask what you can do for your country”, who gave us the tyrannical Bobby Kennedy as Attorney General, who gave us the Bay of Pigs, the Missile Crisis and the beginning of the big buildup in Vietnam.

(Was this strange silence about Libertarian principles and implied endorsement of the Kennedy regime simply an accident? Or was it part of a plan to create what John Mason jokingly referred to as “The Camelot Consensus”? In retrospect, the Kennedy-style hairdo and the widely-disseminated photo of Clark artfully posed in front of a picture of JFK do begin to assume a new significance — but perhaps not. Coincidences do happen, after all.)

Listening to Clark that night, I was stunned. For that, we labored fourteen months? By any standard, those minutes must stand as a low point in the history of the libertarian movement; a grotesque mockery of everything we have fought for and believe in.

One can only ask: how many of us would have gone out petitioning and doorbelling for Clark contributing our hard-earned cash and talking him up to our friends, if we had known that he would do what he did that night?

Just as important, how can we now claim that Clark’s 900,000 votes really stand for anything at all? How many of the people who voted for Clark were voting for anything that any of us would even vaguely recognize as libertarian principles — and how many were voting for a Return to Camelot?

MANAGEMENT

There is a myth, widely accepted in Libertarian circles, that Ed Crane is a “uniquely competent” person. “He may be arrogant and exclusionist,” the argument goes, “but he gets results.”

It is time that this myth is put to rest, once and for all. Hopefully, we have already shown that Crane is a poor strategist. But what about his skills as a manager?

If strategy is the art of devising plans for attaining goals, management is the art of implementing those plans. An effective manager is a good organizer, minimizes problems through planning and foresight, has good “people skills”, and is fiscally responsible. A poor manager has the opposite qualities.

With these points in mind, let’s look at Crane’s record, starting with the 1979 Presidential Nominating Convention.

Crane managed to get himself appointed Convention Director on the basis of his alleged “professionalism” and a glittering proposal which showed the party making a bundle off the event. In his dealings with The Convention Connection, he repeatedly told Dave Galland to plan on the basis of 4,000 attendees. Convention package prices where set at far too high a level (to cover the cost of dozens of speakers, most of them of marginal interest) and promotion to Libertarians in the Los Angeles area was neglected.

As a result, only 2,000 people showed up — many of them for only a small portion of the scheduled events — and the convention lost $35,000, which had to be made up by the Clark for President Committee. Still, we were told, the convention was a great success because it got us lots of media coverage — only fourteen months before the election — and launched the Clark campaign to a flying start.

The selection of a campaign theme, for consistent use throughout the year, provides another illustration of Crane’s managerial talents. As any communications professional will attest, continuity is a key to successful recognition-building, especially on a limited budget. And yet, incredibly, the Clark campaign changed its theme three times.

The first theme was “Toward A Three-Party System”. This was replaced with “Free Up The System”, and then with “America: Freedom Was The Original Idea”. None of these is a particularly great slogan, but at least the latter two give some indication of what the LP is all about. And you’d think that by July of 1980 (ten months into the campaign) one or another of these themes would have long been settled on.

You might think that. But you’d be wrong. In July, for no discernable reason, another campaign theme was unveiled: “A New Beginning for America”. In terms of content, this one was weaker than any of its predecessors — so bland and vapid that anyone, from a Communist to a conservative Republican, could use it with equal facility.

In fact, the conservative Republicans were using it! The same week that the first Clark spot using this theme was aired, millions of Americans sat in front of their TV sets and watched the Republican national convention — whose podium was emblazoned with the words “Together, A New Beginning”. Sound, smart planning pays off again!

The next Crane triumph was Alternative ‘80! Originally planned as a relatively low-cost, low-key fund-raiser, it was transformed at Crane’s insistence into a “media event” with guest appearances by various “celebrities”. Laanched with far too little lead time, it was a dismal flop. The “big names” who participated included Howard Jarvis (who explained that he was supporting Reagan) and Gene McCarthy (who soon thereafter also came out for Reagan). The media ignored it almost completely. And instead of raising $250,000 (the announced goal), the event lost $190,000. Never one to let the truth stand in his way, Crane nonetheless sent out a press release stating that Alternative ‘80! had generated a net profit of $245,000.

The generally inept management of the Clark campaign was not confined to the Big Events, however. They dropped the ball on the little things, too.

A good example was the production and distribution of the White Papers. In Colorado, we first learned about the release of the White Paper on Taxes and Spending when a hostile write-up on it appeared in The Rocky Mountain News. Colorado LP State Chairman John Mason — also a Congressional candidate — was asked for comments, and could only grin sheepishly, as he had not been sent a copy. Neither, as it turned out, had any of our other candidates. The same thing happened again, a few weeks later, when the Foreign Policy Paper was released. (In fact, even after repeated assurances by the campaign, none of Colorado’s Congressional candidates ever received a full set of the White Papers, issue papers or fact sheets.)

But perhaps the worst example of managerial ineptitude in the Clark campaign was in the area of fund-raising and financial responsibility. Despite David Koch’s generous contribution of $2 million, the campaign raised only $1 million from other sources. (I think if I were David Koch, I’d feel that I’d been taken for a ride by Fast Eddie.) And, at last report, the final deficit for the campaign was in the area of $200,000.

Of course, one reason for the financial problems is that the campaign didn’t have a professional fund-raiser on board until it was half over. Then, finally, Dale and Carolyn Hogue — experienced professionals — were persuaded to take on the responsibility for raising money. After a few months, they quit, because they couldn’t stand working with Crane — and at last report were suing the campaign organization for money owed them. (One sign of a good manager is his ability to attract and hold good people.)

This litany of mismanagement could be continued ad nauseam. But hopefully, a pattern has been made clear. Crane’s standard operating procedure is to make grandiose promises, fail to deliver, and then belligerently maintain that the failure was in fact a success.

It’s time we stopped falling for this routine.

ETHICS

Political cooperation depends, more than anything else, on the participants’ willingness and ability to negotiate in good faith.

Differences in ideology or strategic vision can be overcome, if those who seek to work together can reach an accommodation with one another, and honor their agreements. Conversely, no real cooperation between ethical and unethical individuals is possible. Liars and honest men cannot be allies for long.

And the ugly truth is that throughout the Clark campaign, people were lied to — regularly and deliberately.

On Wednesday, September 5, 1979, a group of prominent Libertarians — including myself, David Bergland, M. L. Hanson, Murray Rothbard, John Hospers, Bob Poole, and others — met with Ed Clark in the Bonaventure Hotel on the eve of the presidential nominating convention. Several of us expressed great concern that his campaign be open and accessible to a full range of Libertarian viewpoints, and fear that unless adequate safeguards were established, the campaign might stray from Libertarian principles.

After some negotiations, we agreed to support Clark in return for three promises: that Ed Crane not be in charge of the campaign, that a Steering Committee consisting of certain individuals be established to formulate campaign strategy and policy, and that a Review Committee be established to pass judgement on all campaign materials before they were issued. One of the people Clark agreed to have on the Steering Committee was Bill Evers.

All three promises were broken.

Ed Crane was in charge of the campaign; by early Spring, all pretense that Ray Cunningham was really in charge had been dropped.

The Steering Committee was formed, but virtually ignored. Bill Evers was excluded from the group, blackballed by Crane, who stated that he found Evers “impossible to work with”.

Very little of the material released by the Clark campaign was submitted to the Review Committee; virtually none was submitted in advance of its actual release. (Given the content of much of that material, it’s easy to see why!)

In sum, our pre-convention fears proved all too accurate. The campaign did become a virtual “one-man show”, and principles were abandoned. In addition to the Big Lies noted immediately above and the waffling on principle documented earlier, the campaign began, increasingly, to indulge in what might be called Nasty Little Lies as well. Some examples:

*In late December of 1979, Ballot Drive Co-Ordinator Howie Rich told Colorado LP Chairman John Mason that it was absolutely imperative that Colorado complete its ballot drive by December 31, because “Colorado will be the 30th state, and it’s really important that we make it in 30 by the end of the year”. The same day he said this to Mason, he told Paul Grant — then a National Committee member — that the drive had been completed in only 21 states!

*As previously noted, Clark and Crane regularly told the news media that “most of our funding is coming from small contributors”, when in fact David Koch was providing about two-thirds of the money.

*On October 3, 1980, Boulder businessman Binx Selby called the Clark Headquarters in Washington and requested copies of the White Papers. Selby was told that the Foreign Policy Paper was out of print, but that the other would be sent immediately. A few minutes later, Ruth Bennett, office manager for the Colorado Libertarian Party, called and also asked for the White Papers. The same person Selby had talked to told her that they were “unavailable”.

*Throughout Clark’s campaign literature, it was stated that the Libertarian Party was founded in 1972. In actuality, the party was founded in 1971; this fact is widely stated in party literature, and both Clark and Crane know it. Yet they chose to deliberately falsify historical fact. Why? (Hint: Clark and Crane first became involved in 1972.)

To be sure, none of these latter examples is overwhelming in its significance. But taken cumulatively, and added to the previously-cited prevarications, they point almost inescapably to one conclusion: that the Clark campaign was a fundamentally unethical, unprincipled, and opportunistic operation.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

In this writer’s opinion, the evidence presented in this report proves all but conclusively that the management of the Clark campaign was neither competent nor honest.

One more campaign like this will, quite literally, kill the party; nobody in his right mind will stick around for another round of lies, abuse, and betrayal of principle like the one Ed Crane engineered in 1980.

The question is — what do we do about it? How do we learn from our mistakes, and assure that they are not repeated in the future?

In my belief, the first thing we must do is enact changes in the LP Constitution and By-Laws, firmly establishing the National Committee’s control over all future presidential campaigns. This will go a long way toward solving the problem.

The other thing that must be done is that Ed Crane and the cheap opportunism he represents must be repudiated, once and for all, by the honest and competent men and women who make up the vast majority of the Libertarian Party. If we are to consort, politically, with liars and opportunists, let us go back to being Democrats and Republicans. They, at least, are liars and opportunists who win elections!

Each of us must stand up and be counted. Whatever your beliefs, now is the time to make your feelings known.

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*Assuming that each copy of each magazine was read by two people, chances are that one of them actually read the piece on Clark. Thus, the combined effect of these articles was to reach about 10% of the voting-age population, one time apiece. If half of those who read the articles actually voted, we’re looking at about 8 or 9 million, or about 10% of the voters.

*To be fair, after some haranguing, Clark eventually did take the hard-core position on the draft, calling it by its rightful name — slavery — and stating that Libertarians oppose it on principle.